


Broader Shoulders.

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Born to different Houses kind of AU, F/M, So AU guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-08
Updated: 2012-09-08
Packaged: 2017-11-13 19:06:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Ned brings his only daughter and second son to court, and the Tyrells bring both their girls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broader Shoulders.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amusewithaview](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amusewithaview/gifts).



> Book-ages all round, except for Arya who is now Sansa’s age (eleven at series open).
> 
> This is told in snapshots that have been floating around my head since the prompt arrived in the comments on Flights of Fancy, so I’m sorry if it’s not a great work of storytelling.
> 
> It turned into less actually-Willas as a Stark, and more into What if the Stark in King’s Landing had been a boy, and a defiantly pig-headed one at that? (Which plays into my vision of Willas, of course, but there’s a lack of political skill that means he’s not the Willas I write in Rough Winds or Soldiers’ Daughters). So. Hope it works?
> 
> Title from a Jewish proverb: I ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders. 
> 
> Let’s roll B|

Cat takes one last look at her children, Ned’s son, and their ward, before making her way to the godswood to share the news with her husband.

Robb and Jon are sparring, Jon with the upper hand, and Theon is tossing sticks and stones and clods of dirt at them, laughing all the while.

Willas, meanwhile, her Stark-eyed Tully boy, has Rickon sitting on his shoulders, Bran under one arm and Arya under the other, and he’s chatting animatedly to all three about a trail he and Robb and Jon found when they rode out into the wolfswood. Rickon squeals in delight when Willas promises to bring the three of them with him when he goes next to explore it further.

Robb and Jon finish their bout, Robb the victor by some twist she missed, and throw aside helms and practice swords as they cross the yard to their brothers and sister.

Cat smiles, using the sight of her children and Ned’s laughing together in the pale sunshine to steel herself for the job ahead of her.

 

*

 

Robb has to stop himself from laughing when the King steps off his horse and is just as fat and wine-soaked as Willas predicted he would be.

At his side, his brother’s mouth is twisted with the effort of holding back his mirth, and Robb only just avoids catching Willas’ eye – a mercy, really, because that would shred their tenuous hold on control.

The King greets each of them in turn, lingering over-long on Arya, eleven years just gone and suddenly becoming a woman, to everyone’s amazement, and Robb notices the way Willas’ eyes narrow when the King cups Arya’s chin in his hand and tips her sullen face up. He’s sure that nobody else would notice the wildfire-quick glare Willas shoots at the King, but he nudges his twin just to be safe.

Willas seems the least surprised of everyone when it is later announced that Arya will be marrying Prince Joffrey.

 

*

 

Bran falls and Mother breaks with him, and Rickon screams if anyone tries to take him away from Willas.

It is with Rickon balanced on his hip that Willas enters Bran’s room to find Mother sitting with blank eyes at the bedside, her hands clutching some piece of sewing or other, and he sets Rickon down to sit beside Bran on the bed before trying to coax Mother away to eat or wash or sleep.

He fails, but he and Rickon return three times a day, every day, until he leaves with Father and Arya and the rest to go south to King’s Landing, where he is to squire for the King’s youngest brother.

 

*

 

Arya fights the prince and tosses his sword in the river while Willas and the butcher’s boy watch in stunned, horrified silence, and it is only Willas’ quick hands that stop Arya from pummelling Joffrey halfways to death.

Nymeria runs and Silver stays and almost pays with his life for his mild manner, his obedience, but Father knows to trust Willas’ judgement when it comes to animals, their direwolves in particular, and so between them they manage to dissuade the King from calling for Silver’s head.

Arya and the prince watch one another with weary, venomous eyes, and Willas begins to seriously consider how he might free his little sister from her betrothal.

 

*

 

Father hates King’s Landing, that’s obvious to both Willas and Arya almost as soon as they come within sight of the city, but they never expected to dislike it so much themselves.

Arya despises having to spend her days around the Red Keep, and Willas is deeply unimpressed by the way Lord Renly, though kindly, is much more interested in cavorting with Ser Loras Tyrell than in actually training Willas as he is supposed to.

 

*

 

Arya’s “dancing instructor” is amused when she brings Willas to her lesson, dragging him away from the practice yard. There are some who mock him for fighting with a greatsword, but Willas remains cheerfully unimpressed by their attempts at humour and practices endlessly with Ser Aron, the master-at-arms, and Lord Renly when he actually bothers to appear in the yard.

Arya envies Willas the freedom that is his, in being allowed to publicly learn to fight, and he envies the freedom that is hers, in being allowed to spend her days closeted away from court.

He _loathes_ court, and is becoming ever more determined to find some way to break Arya’s betrothal to Prince Joffrey without insulting the crown.

 

*

 

Prince Joffrey of the House Baratheon quickly becomes the person Willas hates more than any other in the world, and Robb laments to see it in his brother’s letters.

Mother disapproves of Willas’ open dislike of the prince, but Robb knows Willas well enough – better than anyone else ever could, because they’re almost the same person, really – to know that the prince truly must be terrible for Willas to carry such venomous hatred for him in his heart.

Robb hates those who Willas hates just as a matter of principle, and so he hates Joffrey Baratheon with everything in him, not just because Willas hates him but also because the horrible little shit gets to spend time with Robb’s twin and Robb doesn’t.

Willas going to King’s Landing with Father and Arya seemed a much better idea before he actually _went._

 

*

 

Father begins to act strangely, secretively, and suddenly Willas and Arya are being sat down and told to pack their things in preparation for going home to Winterfell.

Arya asks if she can bring Syrio.

Willas asks if this means Arya’s betrothal is broken.

Father says yes to both, and Willas wraps an arm around Arya and shares a grin of fierce relief.

They are going _home._

 

*

 

They are with Syrio when the Lannister men come for them, and when their enemies refuse to tell him where Father is, Willas pushes Arya behind him with one hand and wraps the other around the hilt of his sword, and when Syrio chides Arya for not running fast enough Willas doesn’t hear, not over his own scream of pain because his knee, his knee-

 

*

 

He awakes when someone – the Queen? – enters his room, Maester Pycelle at her side and a cold smile on her supposedly lovely face.

No, the smile is not cold and it is not the Queen at all but Princess Myrcella, and there is Prince Tommen behind her, always hiding behind his brighter, bolder sister, just like Bran always hid with Arya, and both of them are asking him if he is well, if he might be returning to court soon, if what they say of his father is true.

Willas does not know what they say of his father, though, so he asks and Maester Pycelle tells him, and Willas flies into such a rage at the very _idea_ of his father being accused of behaving in anything but an utterly honourable manner that the old man ushers the children out of the room as though Willas might rise from his bed and hurt them.

He tries to rise, but the pain that shoots through his leg is so intense that he faints dead away and knows no more for a long while.

 

*

 

They keep him asleep, or near enough, a mixture of dreamwine and poppy’s milk and sweetsleep that renders him useless and half-dead.

When he is finally allowed to awake, his leg is wrapped in a cast almost from his hip, he can hardly move he’s so weak and sore, and the Queen – it truly is the Queen this time, not a muzzy impression of her in Myrcella’s face – telling him that Arya is missing and Father is dead and that he must write a letter to Robb denouncing Father for a traitor.

They bring him before the King – _the bastard,_ people whisper, _the Kingslayer’s bastard, that’s what Ned Stark said –_ on crutches, so dizzy he can hardly see straight, and still he refuses to denounce his father. Willas knew his father ( _Father is dead Father is dead Mother won’t be able to bear it she won’t)_ would never betray Robert Baratheon, his dearest friend, and so it _must_ be true that Joffrey and the others are the Kingslayer’s children.

Willas says as much when the Queen demands his reasons for disobeying the King.

His cast shatters, and Joffrey laughs as Willas sobs in agony and tries to protect his head.

 

*

 

He spends most of his time abed, unable to rise for fear of ruining his leg further, but he writes letter after letter to Robb, endless letters that all end up in the fire because he knows well enough that not a single one would ever actually be sent to Winterfell or Moat Cailin or Riverrun or wherever it is that Robb is now – they are careful not to let him hear anything about his brother, and Willas aches for Robb, for his other half, with his entire being, prays desperately that Robb is safe and hopes that the gods can hear him this far from the godswood – because they do not contain the words the Lannisters wish him to write.

Maester Pycelle clears him to return to court, and while his refusal to leave his rooms is honoured for two whole days, on the third Preston Greenfield arrives in his bedchamber and bullies him into dressing and making his slow, painful way down to the throne room on his crutches. He lingers behind the crowds as Joffrey rules, and he despises them all for their cowardice.

It is while in the throne room, though, that he hears tell of the King in the North, and sees people looking at him as Robb’s heir.

He feels sick at the thought – both that him inheriting Winterfell is now a very real possibility and that Robb will very possibly _die_ soon, because a world without Robb in it is one Willas does not think he could bear – and makes a decision to leave his rooms every morning, but also to seek refuge in the vast library. He has always liked reading, and now that he cannot venture to the practice yard – indeed, has been quite clearly abandoned by Lord Renly, who was last heard of crowning himself in Highgarden – it seems as if he may as well hone the one weapon left to him.

 

*

 

Robb takes the Kingslayer, and Willas’ cast is broken for a second time. Maester Pycelle says something about amputating his leg, and Willas fights so desperately that the old man subsides and resets the bones – the shattered, ruined bones – as best he can.

Willas lies in bed and glares hatefully at his crutches, and wonders if this is how the world now feels to Bran – inaccessible and terrifying – and prays for Robb to win. Robb must win. He must win, because if he does not, he will die, and Willas cannot stand the thought of Robb dying.

 

*

 

He exists in a world of little more than pain, for a time, because every time Robb succeeds in anything, Joffrey vents his not inconsiderable fury on Willas – or, more specifically, on Willas’ now useless leg.

Then the Tyrells come to court.

 

*

 

Loras – now bedecked in white – tries to speak with him soon after the Tyrells smash Stannis’ armies and become the saviours of King’s Landing, but Willas cannot bear to speak to him. Loras and Renly were so close that Loras _must_ have known Renly was going to abandon Father, must have known everything, and still they ran away, caring only for their own skins and leaving him and Arya and Father to fend for themselves. Father is dead, Arya is probably dead, and now with the Tyrells on side-

Robb cannot die. He cannot. Willas turns his face away from Loras damned Tyrell and prays harder than ever before for his brother’s life.

(He is ashamed when he realises that he hasn’t prayed for Mother or Bran or Rickon in days, because he has been so focused on Robb).

 

*

 

Margaery Tyrell is set to marry Joffrey, Willas hears, and he deigns to speak with Loras if only to warn the man who was once his friend that his sister is in the gravest of danger (Willas cannot bear to think of his own sister, missing so long now that he _hopes_ she is dead, because who can say what might have happened to her if she is not?).

Loras tells him that there are whispers about court that Willas is being held prisoner until the Kingslayer is returned to the Lannisters, that that is why he is never seen about court, and Willas tosses back the covers to reveal his leg – uncasted, because Maester Pycelle insists the wounds where the bones broke the skin need air to heal – to Loras.

Loras cannot look at it, and Willas bites back rage and curses and tears and asks Loras to leave.

 

*

 

Sansa Tyrell is the most beautiful thing Willas has ever seen.

He happens across her in the library, this shy, sweet girl who has ever hidden in her barely-older sister’s wake, just as he hid in Robb’s. She has the rich chestnut hair of her siblings, but her eyes are soft green-gold, not hazel, warm and gentle and not at all pitying, as everyone else’s seem to be of late.

Not that anyone would dare pity him openly, of course. Not with Joffrey and his whore mother watching everyone’s every move.

But Sansa Tyrell is sympathetic. Sansa Tyrell coaxes Willas back to court, and makes sure to keep close to him. He can see her sister and grandmother watching, knows that it must at least in part be some way of gaining even greater influence – the heir to Winterfell for the Queen’s sister? What could be better? – but Sansa smiles and he somehow doesn’t care.

It is nice to have someone smile without malice. It has been so long.

 

*

 

He is summoned before court on a bright morning, a morning when his leg is uncasted to allow the wounds to heal some more, and Joffrey laughs and laughs and demands that he take the knee, take his _bad_ knee, and mocks him as the dispossessed Lord of Winterfell.

Willas kneels with his head down, eyes wide and breath short, so short, he can’t breathe, Robb can’t be dead he can’t he’s not he mustn’t be no no no no no-

 

*

 

Loras helped him to the library, to his sanctuary, and it is there that Sansa finds him hours later, sitting in the window seat and staring blankly at the floor as he tries to make sense of the gaping hole in his chest where Robb and Mother and Father and Bran and Rickon used to be. There is only the faint hope of Arya and Jon left there now, and all it takes is Sansa’s dainty hand on his shoulder for the bonds holding that hole back to break, and he sobs in her arms as he comes to terms with being alone in the world.

 

*

 

The Tyrells send a maester to him the next morning.

He offers to take any letters Willas might have and send them before the Lannisters can see, but who would Willas write to? Mad Aunt Lysa in the Eyrie? Jon at the Wall? Uncle Brynden, who knows where? Uncle Edmure, prisoner of the Lannisters?

He does something to ease the pain in Willas’ leg, though, and so Willas is grateful for his presence.

 

*

 

He tries to get up on the morning of his and Robb’s (just his) name day.

He tries.

 

*

 

He feels broken, somehow, and only the thought of finding Arya and wreaking vengeance on Lannisters and Boltons and Freys and Greyjoys keeps him together.

Then he finds himself invited to tea with Olenna Redwyne, and Sansa looks at him with such desperate hope in those soft eyes of hers when she and her grandmother explain a plan that will prevent Sansa from having to marry Kevan Lannister’s idiot son _and_ put Willas on the road to reclaiming Winterfell.

 

*

 

He cannot sneak, not with a leg that hangs limp in his wake and two unwieldy crutches, but somehow, he manages to make it to all his clandestine meetings with various members of House Tyrell, especially those with Lord Tyrell himself, and suddenly Garlan is sneaking a white cloak embroidered with a grey direwolf into Willas’ rooms and smiling and welcoming him to the family in a whisper.

Sansa sneaks herself into his rooms with a smile and a whisper and more than one kiss, too, and then even if he wanted to say no to marrying her he couldn’t, not with her asleep on his chest and her skin so warm and soft against his.

 

*

 

It’s too late by the time Joffrey and the bitch find out, of course, because the Tyrells have been outmanoeuvring the Lannisters at every turn.

Margaery begins whispering to Joffrey that mayhaps it would be better to send the last Stark away, send him somewhere safe, and now that he’s married to Sansa wouldn’t Willas be safe in Highgarden where Garlan can keep a close watch on him?

Sansa says that Maester Lomys is the finest maester there is, that she will write to her grandfather in Oldtown and have him speak with the archmaesters of the Citadel.

Willas hopes that he can reach Highgarden almost as ardently as he hopes for Arya to be alive.

 

*

 

There are Northmen and an Onion Knight at Highgarden, all imploring him to come home, to come and take Winterfell, but he cannot – the ride, even in the wheelhouse, near killed him with the pain in his leg, and Sansa takes him aside to tell him of a particularly important conversation she had with Maester Lomys that morning and he _cannot_ go north yet.

But he will go north. He will return home, with his goodfather’s men at his back, and he will reclaim Winterfell.

He will give Sansa a home. He will take back what was stolen from his family. He will do everything he can to honour his family’s memory.

 


End file.
